


Telephone

by Kittywitch



Series: Reconstruction Era O.Z. [1]
Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Drama, Gen, Literature, M/M, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywitch/pseuds/Kittywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cain attempts to solve a crime with Glitch's help, however Glitch forgets what he's going and meets up the princesses for a night of dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Cain Tracks a Serial Killer And the Song is Mashed Up with Sandman

You simply couldn't trust beautiful women, Cain found. Sure, there were a few decent ones out there, but they were getting hard to find.

Harder, since that sociopath had started luring engenoues to her "casting studio", beheading them, and changing their faces for hers like they were hats. The problem with tracking down someone like this is that they didn't exactly look the same every time they went into public.  
Glitch said that he had a device which could be modified to identify someone without using their face. It was intended as a medical scanner, checking blood type, heart rate, blood pressure, recent medical problems, how much magic was built up in their body, and that sort of thing. All he had to do was get within five feet of her once, and then someone with identical readings. It was an imperfect system, yes, but better than what Cain had to go on before.  
Moreover, Glitch was a good man to have at your back during a fight. Or several feet in front of you subduing the hoard of evil minions, trademark. In Cain's opinion, he was a good man to have at your back in several situations, but that was neither here nor there.  
It was a good plan. Like most good plans, Cain could blame the fact it wasn't working on Glitch. Glitch had went back to fetch the scanner thing, whatever he called it, nearly three hours ago, and hadn't been seen since. And Cain knew exactly why Glitch wasn't back yet. He was distracted. He probably saw something shiny on the way to the palace and was even now starting a conversation with someone who'd rather just punch him out. Or maybe an inanimate object.  
Okay, so there were better people to be partnered with while working. Cain liked Glitch, and he was very smart, and a good fighter, but that man needed a keeper. Cain had something to do here, if Glitch came around in time to help, more the better, but if Cain got as far as he could on his own, then he'd go off, track his friend down, and extricate him from whatever he'd gotten himself into.  
He could work by himself. He'd always done so before. The important part was that he was wearing the tin again. He didn't need that fancy scanner business. Just good, old-fashioned tracking and police work. The only good part about the woman's way of changing faces is that it was pretty easy to tell when she did it. The bodies would show up.

He turned his collar up and kept moving through the dim of Central City's Sin District. Which, these days, was most of the city. He was in the bad part of town, and that was saying something. The witch had loved power and not particularly cared what was done with it. There were only a few kinds of people who flourished in that kind of country, and they were all the kind of people who made you want to take a bath after talking to. Any city where Anton De Milo was a reasonable business associate was not a city Cain wanted to live in. Sadly, it was a city that needed him.  
He turned down an alley, keeping his eyes on the worn and broken paving. It was damn near impossible to track a single person in a crowded city, but for some reason it was the part of the job he liked the most. Perhaps it was _because_ of the difficulty.

He'd been following a faint scent of perfume for about half an hour. It wasn't the heaviness of the scent that was unusual, it was the undertone. Mixed in with the usual rose and musk was something that, if he wasn't looking for it in particular, he'd think was added to the perfume to confuse the nose to smell harder. A touch of that sweet, heavy smell of rotting meat. It was distinctive. And it had been lingering around the last two bodies.  
But it wouldn't be able to use to use it to track down this woman much longer. As he headed further down the street, it was completely cloaked in hundreds of other scents, just as cheap and sweet and rancid. Different whorehouses had different flavors. This street tended to think imported perfume gave it's girls a touch of class. Sadly, cheap perfume from another country still smelled like cheap perfume. It's not so much that he was entering a red light district as the lights were a different shade red down this lane.

"Hey honey, looking for a good time?" asked a voice as cloying as the scent that surrounded them. He didn't respond to the girl or even look up at her. Something in her voice vaguely reminded him of the young princess he'd recently escorted through the zone, if she'd spent the last three years of her life smoking cloves and shouting "hey honey, looking for a good time?" from doorways. He didn't want to see the whore, because if it also looked like Deegee he thought he might be sick.  
Cain paused and lifted his face slightly from the upturned collar.

With the trail dead, the best he could do was guess. No, not guess. Deduce. Which means guessing but thinking about it first. He'd been looking for this woman for a few weeks, and that brought him closer to her than he wanted to think about. He couldn't figure out exactly what she planned to do at any given point, but he could guess. Not guess, he reminded himself again.  
The gin joint pressed against the wall of an even less respectable building made the Poppy look like a large and classy establishment. Even after it's major draw got his life sucked out of his mouth by the sorceress. A faded and dirty plaque above the door identified the business as the "Languid Air" tavern. Cain wondered for a moment if that was really the way it was spelled and if it just looked wrong because of the overly decorative font. "The Languid Air" seemed to be trying to be more than a hole in the wall that smelt like bad whiskey. They'd even gone so far as to replace the glass with line drawings of naked women with watery hair, oiling the paper for transparency. At least he hoped that's why the paper was oiled.

He entered, and above him a bell without a clapper swung pointlessly. It was a very small room, but somehow that just seemed to mean that it was entirely made up of murky corners. The only good part of this was that a seasoned tinman could cover the entire room at a glance and pick out the details. One exit, besides the front door. A beaded curtain led to a small alley where other businesses of the same nature shared bathrooms, public telephones, and enough privacy for the sort of people who would meet in these establishments. Cain privately hoped at least this time all three were not the same cubical, but experience suggested otherwise. At least it had the curtain. The whole place was the hollow shell of pretension with no substance to hold it up. It had all of the distaste of tackiness with none of the comfort. The velveteen on the chairs was so worn that it seemed like it would rip if someone sat on it.  
The barman, who could clearly be seen despite there was one lamp in the room and it was trying to be moody, didn't so much acknowledge Cain had entered as grumble to himself when he entered. Part of Cain felt like quipping about friendly service, since it couldn't make him any less conspicuous. There were only four patrons including himself, and for once in his life he was the least suspicious looking person in the room. Which of course made him the most suspicious.

Two men sat at opposite end of the room, one with an eyepatch and the other smelling vaguely of gangrene. Each of them had an unlabeled bottle and a shot glass, which they were slowly emptying the bottles into. The shots would then get emptied into the men themselves. The man with an eyepatch was wearing three guns, one of which he thought was hidden.  
There was no question who the most suspicious person was, other than him. He'd put her at a few years younger than him, but the fact that she was trying to look as young as his son made her look older. She'd put on her makeup so thick it had started to crack in the corners of her mouth, twisting her dark hair extravagantly on top of itself. She was wearing false eyelashes just short enough that, with a few drinks, she might think there was one person in the bar who thought they were real. She wore the worn fur and gaudy jewelry that poor women collected for when they wanted to look rich. The only part of her body that wasn't swathed in old, tatty lace was the broad expanse of cleavage escaping from a corset that defied all logic. He had not been aware something that low cut could get the bosom that close to the face, and he had met Azkadellia. She had even rouged her bosom. The worst part of her whole appearance was that if she hadn't been trying so hard to be beautiful, she'd have done a better job of it.

This was all taken in over the course of that first glance, and if he paused longer on the woman, he doubted anyone in the tavern had noticed. If they had, it probably wouldn't strike them as odd, given that she was the most beautiful woman in the room. And the only one. Cain turned to the bartender, keeping his hat over his eyes.  
"Whiskey." he said quietly. Nothing quite tipped someone off as a policeman as entering a bar and not buying a drink.  
"Five copper." said the barman gruffly. He didn't bother reaching for the bottle.  
"Forget it. Five copper whiskey tastes like five coppers." Cain turned away from the bar and back into the room. The two men had gone back to their drinks, but the woman was looking at him. And now, he was looking at her. There was always the direct approach. She'd already seen him, after all.

Cain took the two steps it took to stand above the woman's table. She looked up at him with a wry little smile. Clearly, she didn't trust him anymore than he trusted her, and all that stopped him from drawing his gun right then was the fact she was a woman.  
"What's a lady like you doing in this hole in the wall?"  
"Drinking a sherry and looking less out of place than you, tinman."  
"And does your sherry taste like metal filings?"  
"No more than usual."  
"I guess I'd better have a sherry then." Cain took a seat across from her.  
There was a good chance this woman was the criminal he had tracked down. For one thing, she reeked of that dead-body perfume. He couldn't just bring her in on the suspicion, though. People in this part of Central City still were used to dealing with their problems without the help of the law, the law usually consisting of Longcoats who got bored. Corrupt enforcement, corrupt citizens, and those among them who might have the inclination to do some good trapped either in prisons or their own problems. Just thinking about it was enough to make Cain roll his shoulders and be glad he was out of the tin suit. His eyes went dead as he tried to stop thinking about the troubling past and focus on the troubling present.  
And where the hell was Glitch?

"Now I wonder," said the woman, "What part of telling you what I was drinking made you think you could sit down with me. What a man like _you_ is even doing here. And why you didn't even blink when I called you a tinman, given that they were all killed off years ago."  
"Not all of them." Cain corrected. "Some of them just saw which side was winning and joined the longcoats." _The turncoat bastards._ The woman smiled again. It was starting to make Cain feel ill. He wanted to get her right now, but it wouldn't be much of a political reform if justice was shooting women under tables in seedy bars.  
"And now that there is no longcoats?"  
"A man has to eat." he responded. "And somewhere, someone wants someone else shot. That's gonna be true no matter the ruler. I'm just doing what I'm good at."  
"So you're telling me you're a hitman?" _Not where I was going with my cover, but I'll roll with it..._ thought Cain.  
"Depends. Are you the someone who wants someone else shot?" he asked. The woman's eyes narrowed. She definitely did not trust him at this point, but now she had a reason not to. The reason she just made up would distract her from the reason she really had not to trust him, and that left Cain in a relatively safe position.  
"You've come to the wrong table, boy." she said venomously. She started to stand, but he did it faster.  
"Please, stay." said Cain smoothly. "I know when I'm not wanted. Always preferred whiskey to sherry anyway." The tinman walked back up to the bar and put his knee on a stool rather than sitting properly. He produced the five coppers the barman had mentioned. The barman smiled evilly, as if he had won, and poured Cain a shot.  
This woman definitely bore watching. It was the perfume that got to him. It was definitely the scent he'd tracked to this tavern, but he wasn't entirely sure if it was the one found on the bodies. The woman knew his voice now, if not his face. Which meant that if she was the murderer, she'd know more about him than he knew about her in less than a week.  
But if he could prove this woman had a different face later, then that would be more than enough. This of course meant that another innocent woman would die. He did not like this plan and he looked forward to scrapping it for a new one. But it was the one he had at the moment.  
And that meant he needed Glitch.  
Cain stood up, leaving the whiskey untouched on the counter. Trying to look natural, he pulled his hat back over his eyes and left through the beaded curtain, sidling into a phone cubicle.  Cain picked up the two ends of the candlestick telephone and held them to his face, adjusting his hat to help hide his eyes. It was a strain to move his eyes without moving his head. He wedged the earpiece between his shoulder and cheek, allowing one hand to creep down to his gun.  
"Central City Operator, how can I be of assistance?" asked a voice that sounded far too cheery for the setting. Cain didn't comment.  
"I need to be patched through to the palace."  
"Pardon me, sir? I didn't quite catch that."  
"The palace. Big shiny castle where the queen with lavender eyes lives. Can you do that?"  
"Certainly, sir. Security code?"  
"Security code?" Cain repeated in a hiss that came from whispering while annoyed. "I live there! There's never been a security code for calling in before!"  
"Yes, that would be the code, sir." answered the operator. Cain blinked. This phone call was getting very surreal very quickly. But then again, he was trying to contact Glitch. He ought to have suspected his mere involvement would cut through the bleak and sordid air in the Sin District like a lemon slice dropped in oily water.  
"To what room would you like to be connected?"  
"Personal quarters. The personal quarters of Ambrose, the queen's advisor. Quickly would be nice."  
"I'm a switchboard operator, sir. I only have the one speed."

In the silence, and then dull echoing rings that followed, Wyatt glanced back into the tavern. A new person had entered after he left. A young woman. Cain's eyes dilated sharply. The thought that was just a suspicion before was now filing out the paperwork for taking out this woman in his head. There was a time when he would have just thrown aside the curtain, drawn his gun and started screaming.  
He wasn't a rogue policeman anymore. He was the only one. That changed things. If he screwed up, it meant that the whole force was a screw up. He had to do things right, because no one else was doing anything at all.

Presently, the ringing stopped. The operator's voice came back.  
"There is no answer, sir. Would  you like to make another call?"  
"Yeah, connect me to one of the princesses and ask where the hell Glitch is."  
"Security code?"  
"I told you, I live there!" he hissed. "I'm Wyatt Cain, I saved DG's live three months ago, and I don't have a security code!"  
"I'll... get another room in the palace, and see if someone can find Mr. Ambrose."  
" _Thank you._ " Cain snarled. He really ought to keep his temper, and more importantly, come up with a new plan. He'd stay on the line as long as possible, and if he finally got Glitch, then... he would hiss, "Lanquid Air, Sin District, bring your scan-gun, now!" and hang up. This was rather dependent on Glitch remembering who Cain was at that particular moment, but aside from that, Cain was fairly sure that Glitch could figure out the rest from the tone in his voice. Besides, it had come down to the "abandon that plan and form a new one as you run" part of the night.

The dark haired woman was talking with a small blonde. Delicate features, very pretty in a sort of wasted innocence way. The brunette touched the younger woman's face in a way that the girl did not look comfortable with. This wasn't just a whore trying out a different clientele. There was something hungry in the way she ran her fingers along the jawline. Just where the cuts for the other faces were made.

"He's not in, Mister Cain."  
"Yeah, I figured that out, thank you." Cain retorted, ready to set down the mouthpiece.  
"He's gone out dancing." said the operator.  
"He's gone out dancing." Cain repeated. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his temper. "Alright, do you know where he went? .... Can I get patched through to them, then? ... I assumed I'd have to hold." Cain frowned and looked around him, as causally as he could manage.  
"Don't worry girl... you'll be okay..." Cain whispered under his breath.  
"What was that, sir?" answered a new voice on the other end of the telephone. A muffled din rose with his voice, several people laughing and faint music.  
"Hello? Is this the Poppy Club?"  
"Yeah, you've reached the bartender. Why the hell did you call a club at this time of night?"  
"I'm looking for someone and I think they're at your club. Do you think you could get this to them?"  
"I ain't no switchboard operator, pal." the bartender responded.  
Back in the tavern, the dark haired woman had taken her purse in her hands. It looked like she was trying to get the younger woman to leave, and the younger woman was nervous.  
"Just hold on, girl..."  
"What was that?"  
"I said I'm looking for my partner."  
"Do you mean partner or 'partner'?"  
"Look, a guy with a zipper running down his head should not be hard to spot! Is he there or isn't he?!"  
"Sorry, it's a little hard to hear you, could you repeat that?"

Cain looked up and out at the pair in the tavern again. They weren't at the table. They weren't even in the tavern.  
"Aw, spittle." Cain swore, dropping the mouthpiece and running after the suspect and victim. The telephone swung on it's cord as he tore after them, leaving the dull echo of "Hello? Hello?" fading after him.  
"He hung up." muttered the bartender, slamming the mouthpiece into it's cradle. "You call that manners?"  
Back on the street, the tinman wheeled to a stop and looked down both lanes of traffic. The two women he was tracking were coming back the way he came. The woman with dark hair looked over her shoulder, saw him, grabbed the young woman's wrist and started running.  
He drew his gun with one hand and his badge with the other.  
"Central City Police!"


	2. In Which the Princesses Go to a Nightclub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deegee and Azkadeilia join Glitch in the nightclub, and Azkadeilia starts acting strangely. Meanwhile, Cain finds the face-stealing serial killer.

The car rolled to a stop, and the lights and noise outside increased slightly.

"You ready, Deeg?" asked Azkadeilia. Deegee chewed her lip uncomfortably in response.

While Deegee and Azkadellia were the only people in the room while the discussion was taking place, and it was certainly a discussion, Deegee hadn't really been involved in the decision to go out tonight. It had something to do with making up for lost time and the sort of bonding experiences two sisters could have once they were adults. The conclusion was that they were going to have a girl's night out, and that Deegee was going to change first.

Still, she was enjoying the night as much as could be expected. Being princesses, the two young women had enjoyed a certain amount of attention and pomp at they immersed themselves into Central City's nightlife. At very least, Az enjoyed it. Deegee, who had spent a great deal of her life as a waitress in a town smaller than she'd like to admit, mostly felt confused and awkward. It was odd, she'd never really felt small-town before, but she had never had so many people so interested in her as soon as she'd shown up. Part of her wished that she would actually see a paparazzi, and that they would come close enough that she could punch them. There weren't, just a fairly regular pick up of discussion whenever they passed someone. It was only to be expected, really; after all, until recently Azkadellia had been ruling the city and surrounding lands with an iron fist.

 

It had been at Deegee's request that they leave the first nightclub. It had been a fairly reserved affair, for a nightclub, where what little upper class the city had to offer drank very expensive alcohol and wore very expensive clothing, and discussed politics with each other despite the fact they clearly didn't know much about it. One of the men who was breathing cigars and brandy in her face seemed to be under the impression that Azkadellia was still the evil empress who ruled over the OZ and it wasn't safe for a girl to have the same name as her dead sister. Moreover, that man stood far too close to her for comfort. He wasn't a good example of the norm, though. Everyone else knew who she was. _Everyone._ She was really sick of how people were looking at her and how desperate they were to talk to her. And the way they cringed away from Azkadellia.

Az had been only too happy to go, to try and find a place with more music and less drinking.

 

As she understood it, on Monday nights _The Poppy_ pushed it's tables back, hired a band, and if you had any interest in dancing in Central City, that was where you were going. For all of it's opium bars and whorehouses, there was not many dance clubs in Central City. 

In Deegee's opinion, the fact that it still smelled the same pretty much killed the ambience of it as a dance hall. It was still dimly lit with small candles in red jars, and still made her feel slightly dirty to enter. On the stage which once held "the man with all the answers", a pantsless diva scatted along with a jazz band far louder than she should have been able to.

Az, evidently pleased with the surroundings, shrugged off her coat into a doorman's waiting arms. Deegee hoped that Az simply didn't realize how lascivious that action looked, or that it only really looked that way because the coat was so very large and the dress underneath was so very... not. Despite the fact that Deegee had been changed into a knee-length dress and Azkadellia's had a small train, Deegee's contained considerably more fabric.

"Az, why are we here?" Deegee asked. The music was clearly too loud for her to hear, because she didn't respond. Deegee pouted slightly to herself. Her idea of a girl's night was more in the pajamas and hair-braiding end of things. She was actually sort of surprised Azkadellia didn't go for that more than the dance club. She was very soft-spoken these days. Then again, if you loosened up a little bit, you could have a good time. Someone certainly was.

 

A man in a long coat was in the center of the dance floor, oblivious to the other dancers, as well as the music. He was dancing fairly well, considering that, and very rarely bumping into other people. Perhaps they were trying to avoid his swirling limbs, as he would kick out, bend back, and punch at the air with very little warning.

He was remarkably coordinated, but at the same time looked as if he was about to trip over his feet. He never did. Just kept twirling and bending in a way that could not be called graceful because it was too fast. And slightly jerky. It was clearly a dance, but it looked dangerous. And familiar.

"Is that... Glitch?" asked DG dubiously.

"Of course." Az smiled, taking her sister's hand. "Who do you think I found out about the dance night from?" The sisters crept further into the dance hall, attracting some attention, mostly on Azkadellia's part and mostly from men. At least this time, no one seemed to recognize them.

He was looking remarkably well-groomed, for Glitch. The fact the royal tailors had recently outfitted him with a wardrobe which hadn't been wandering through the wilderness for several years helped a great deal, as had the opportunity to bathe. Still, the combination of the yellow frogging and shirt against a brilliantly red coat was somewhat of an eyesore. At least his uniform was subdued, but left to dress himself for casual events resulted in something of a perfectly reasonable cut but a blinding palette.

 

"Glitch!" Deegee shouted, waving her hand above her head.

"Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms. He didn't so much stop dancing as switched from spinning to bouncing as he made his way to the princesses. They moved forward towards him, elbows up to keep from knocking into people.

"Deegee!" Glitch shouted over the music. He pulled his friend into a brief hug, all but lifting her from the ground. They separated and he turned to her sister.

"...Azkadellia." he looked about awkwardly, then bowed. There are friends who just happen to be princesses, and then there are princesses who just happen not to be evil anymore.

"I didn't know you guys would be here." he said, keeping his voice raised.

"Well, until a minute ago, neither did we." Deegee answered, though she was barely audible over the music.

"The only thing better than dancing is dancing with your friends." he took each of the princesses' hands in his. "Come on, let's go." Deegee smiled and held up her free hand, bouncing onto the floor. She hated to admit it, but she hadn't really done anything like this on the other side. She hadn't fit in, and didn't really have any friends she rather go clubbing with than stay home and paint on a Saturday night.

Then again, living life from eleven to twenty-six an evil overlady didn't leave much room for partying, and even if Glitch had been used to this sort of thing he didn't remember it anymore. And they were friends. This had every potential to be a good time. People went out and danced with their friends all the time, so there must be something to be said for it.

Deegee glanced over to her sister. Azkadellia was smiling nervously, but widely. At least for her. The group broke apart and started moving to the music. Glitch had the sense or good manners not to attack invisible strangers when standing within two feet of other people, but Deegee was not entirely sure he'd remember they were there. She swayed in place for a moment, and then tried not to think about how silly she must look while dancing. 

Presently, all three of them were bouncing happily in place, managing not to hit each other. Deegee found a technique to toss her hair and skirt, using them like whiskers to keep her from knocking into the other dancers. If her dress didn't hit them, then she wouldn't. It might have been a function of wearing a corset, but Azkadellia mostly writhed in place. It was hardly an unusual form of dance, particularly for a pretty young woman in a dance club, but it did catch the attention of more than a few other people in the club. Namely, her sister.

She loved her sister, and the witch was gone and she was safe and pure, but she couldn't deny that Azkadellia danced like a slut. Maybe it had to do with going through puberty being possessed by an evil witch. Maybe it had to do with being Azkadellia.

Azkadellia turned to Glitch, and her smile fluttered weakly for a second. She raised her hand up to his, and he twirled the princess in place, laughing playfully. He started to turn towards Deegee, as if to give a similar flourish, and she took him by the shoulder and turned him back to face her again. The man was clearly surprised by this, and at least somewhat uncomfortable. However, that level of discomfort was soon forgotten entirely as she moved far closer to him than the crowd required. Deegee cocked an eyebrow. She had started to think that there was something about Glitch that Az hadn't figured out yet.

 

 

Cain's boots splattered things he didn't even want to think about as he ran through the streets.

"Halt! Central City police!" he shouted again, more to explain to the passerby why they shouldn't interfere than to make the suspect stop. He knew she wouldn't. The young woman with her seemed to hear him, though, or simply wanted to break away. Either way, the way she fought was slowing down the suspected face-thief, which was just what the tinman needed.

Cain increased in speed, pushing aside trashcans and strangers who got between him and the women. He couldn't lose her now. If she got away, she'd change her face immediately before he could find her again. And she wouldn't even use the face of the young woman he had seen. No. She'd just kill the girl and leave her abandoned in some dark alley. 

The girl was screaming now, and the crowd had thinned to the point that, even dragging a protesting adult nearly her own size, the dark-haired woman could pick up speed. But so could Cain. The woman pulled her victim into an alley,

The screams stopped almost immediately. Cain's teeth gritted in terror and he pressed forward. There's no way that the killer would have had time to kill her that quickly, but the thought of it was enough to suggest that, once again, he'd failed to protect the innocent. He reached the alley and grabbed the corner to spin himself around faster.

 

The woman stood before him in a small alley less than a meter wide and not much more than two meters long. Good. He liked close quarters. Her arms were around the girl, one pressing her torso against her own like a human shield, the other clutching her face, long black nails like talons pressing into her cheek, the index finger only just not skewering the girl through the eye. The thumb stroked the corner of the girl's mouth fondly, as if trying to stop the trembling and the terror. The young woman had started to cry, no longer screaming or making any noises at all. And behind her, the face-theif grinned, her lacquered red lips smiling only just too far to be connected to her skull. How had he not seen that before? In the sedate, wry expressions where her lips barely parted, he hadn't noticed her limited facial expressions. That tranquil expression was such a staple of fashionable beauty, it had completely slipped by him that it barely changed. It wasn't that her face was blank. It was more like it was molded into that wry little smile like a doll, and any other expression it tried was just pulling the same frozen face into a new position.

 

This was the standoff. He had a gun and she had no weapons he could see. The killer was leaving this alley in handcuffs or in a bag, and Cain no longer had a preference. The only question was, would the girl make it out or would the Central City Face Thief claim one last victim on her way out?

 

"Let go of her." Cain commanded, leveling the gun on the woman. She didn't respond other than to laugh and hold the girl closer. If the intense laughter coming from a face that didn't want to smile was unnerving to the tinman, he didn't show it.

"You think I couldn't hit your head from here?" he asked. "You'll stand down if you don't want blood all over your ugly makeup." 

"Ugly?" she laughed. "If you don't like it, do you wanna see what I've got on underneath?"

It was so surreal watching that mask-like face laugh without moving. But there was anger in her voice. He'd touched a nerve. 

"Hag." he answered simply.

 

As he hoped, the young flung aside her prey and lunged at him. Before he could fire, he dropped his gun in an instinctive move to stop her hands from clawing at his face, and he hadn't braced for her weight to be flung against them. The two fell to the filthy ground in the alleyway, and the girl started screaming again. As if she was the one with a madwoman trying to rip her face off.

 

The serial killer pushed herself up on her elbows and tried to make a run for it, stepping on Cain's shoulder in the process. He grabbed her ankle and made her stumble as he pulled himself up after her. He wouldn't let her get away. He tackled the woman and brought her to the ground. She rolled underneath him, trying to get onto her back and scratch at his face again.

" _I said_ , stop in the name of queen-" he grinned, straddling the suspect on the ground. His little speech was cut off by the woman snarling and lashing out. He had to leap up slightly to avoid getting a knee in the fork. 

He transfered his weight from her abdomen to her trachea. If she really wanted him off her chest, he'd do it. The woman gagged, clawing at his hands, and then kicked up again, this time knocking him off of her chest.

The woman and the tinman pulled themselves onto their haunches and leapt at each other. He had more mass and momentum, so when the pair of them slammed agaisnt the wall of the alley, her back was to the wall.

Cain raised his arm as far as he could and brought his elbow hard into her face. There was a nasty "chunk" sound as her head hit the wall. She pulled her head back to snarl at him, that beautiful, still, over-painted face hanging by three inches of skin in front of her ear.

The woman screamed, and the moment of hesitation that came from suddenly being eight inches from bare, screaming muscle was enough for her to push forward and knock him to the ground. He landed painfully on the ground, scraping his head on the opposite wall as he fell. There was no air in his lungs, and his eyes were blurred with pain. He  reached back and felt on the ground, and the woman took his head in both of her hands and began to beat it against the pavement.

All the while, the girl kept screaming.

 

 

The music in the club throbbed, the dancers not so much swaying as shaking like filaments caught in the sound wave. Both of the princesses found themselves following the leader for a moment, in that position often found in dance clubs where the nervous attempt to imitate the one person there who can dance. They were doing a fairly good job of it, considering Glitch's violent and unpredictable way of dancing.

But, he was trying very hard to make it easy for them, moving as slowly as he could manage and repeating a single motion until they followed. He had attempted to start this to make Azkadellia stop touching him. The success was limited.

Deegee and Azkadellia had moved apart from him, standing to either side and keeping their eyes on him. They dropped when he dropped, swayed when he swayed, and didn't move any closer to him. It was working. He smiled in relief and leap into a strange sort of kicking pirouette, feeling that rush of joy at having thought his way out of an uncomfortable situation.

Smiling awkwardly, Deegee went back to swaying in place. Azkadellia also resumed her previous dance. This left the smartest man in the O.Z. feeling incredibly stupid. He had to stop dancing, or else his hips would have rammed into hers.

Az set her palm on Glitch's chest, and he looked down at it as if it were a particularly large spider.

"Your majesty..?" he asked in a strangely high-pitched voice.

 

 

 

Moving his fingers through dirt wet with his own blood, ears filled with the young woman's scream, Cain fought against the pain. He wasn't going to be taken down by one simple, unarmed woman just because she was completely crazy.

His fingers touched something cold and hard. He reached further for it, but it slipped away from him. The girl was screaming, the faceless woman was shouting, laughing, and he had no air left his lungs. Wyatt strained, trying desperately to move his fingers that last half inch. He could touch it, feel the familiar handle, but he couldn't get his hand to close around it. With one great effort, he wretched his shoulder out from under the woman's elbow and closed his hand against his gun. His pushed it into the bare, bloody face of the killer and fired.

 

 

Deegee, standing behind Glitch, waved her hands in a dance seen in clubs all over the various worlds. She tapped her two pointer fingers together, clasped her hands and swung them cutely, then made a finger pistol from both hands.

She hoped that the pantomime for "He's gay and his boyfriend has a really big gun" was universal. The fact Cain and Glitch were romantically involved was assumption on Deegee's part, but even if they weren't, Glitch would probably be happier if Az wasn't touching him.

If they weren't, Glitch would probably be happier if they were, but Deegee had no control over that.

 

 

Wyatt Cain pushed the dead body off of his chest. She slumped over, bloody and faceless. He drew breath in long, ragged gasps, trying to remember just how it was done. The blonde girl stood with her back against the wall, her hand placed on her solar plexus.

"Tha- thank you." she said weakly. Cain shot her a look of mixed disgust and frustration that really didn't have to do with her. He pulled a cotton handkerchief from his pocket, gave it a shake, and started wiping the blood off his face. His hat was on the ground beside him, he wasn't sure when it had been knocked off but it was clearly before they were on the ground together, because it had been stepped on. Grumbling, he took the now slightly misshapen stetson in his hands and tried to prod it back into it's original position.

"I don't know what to say." she gasped. He pushed himself to his feet. Glitch was going to get a boot up his ass for this. Cain pulled the hat into place, his head doing the majority of the needed reshaping. The girl moved forward, taking his elbow fondly in her hands.

"You saved me." the girl said breathily.

"Just doing my job, ma'am."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked suggestively, pressing her body into his.

"Yeah." he answered. "Go down to Central City Dispatch. It's the apartment above Choice Cuts Butchery on Fleet Street. That's the one where you can actually tell what animal the meat came from, because the heads are still on 'em. It'll have a piece of cardboard with 'CCPD' in the window. There's a man in there called McCoy. He'll take care of you. Tell him the face-stealer is dead and Wyatt Cain will be coming along to do the paperwork." He turned around, his coat flaring.

"Just as soon as I handle one thing." he said darkly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this some time ago. I'm not sure if I would have used quite the same words now that I did in 2010, but I think it still holds up. I did do a sketch of the dresses the princesses wore to the club: http://kittywitchthesecond.deviantart.com/art/The-Princesses-Clubbing-182728128


	3. In Which Glitch Dances and Lady Gaga Leaves her Head and Her Heart on the Dance Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cain finally catches up with Glitch. Deegee asks Azkadellia to explain why she was acting like the obnoxious female character who must be eliminated in any male/male slash fic. The final line leads into the rest of the Reconstruction series. This was intended as the first piece.

The doorman looked skeptically at the man who was standing in front of him. For one thing, he didn't fit the dress code. It wasn't that his outfit wasn't looking smart enough, it was that it, and the man wearing it, had a significant amount of blood splattered across them.

The blond man drew his badge.

While it was common knowledge that policemen were a thing of the past in Central City, the act of drawing the badge also displayed the tinman's sidearm. The doorman weighed the options of letting a very angry, blood-stained man with a gun into the nightclub against _not_ letting a very angry, blood-stained man with a gun into the nightclub, and moved aside.

 

Cain's eyes scanned the crowd, and sure enough, there was Glitch in the middle of the dance floor. His face filled with frustration and disgust. The fact that the princesses were with him did little to make Cain want to pistol-whip Glitch right on the zipper any less. Could be frustration, could be jealously, could be a long-standing desire to hit Glitch on the head. It could have even been that Azkadellia seemed to be attempting to give his friend a lap dance while he was standing up. Cain was covered in blood and did not care at this point.

 

He was already prepared to chew out Glitch in the middle of the dance floor, getting a whole room full of strangers to assist the advisor in feeling awkward. That was a given. But he'd let the princesses escape first. Deegee and Azkadellia, they were royalty. They were important. They needed to be kept safe, even from the potential of a friendly dispute getting ugly in public.

Just then, Azkadellia caught his eye. She was still dancing with Glitch, in so much as it could be called dancing. But she'd clearly seen Cain. She was looking right at him, keeping Glitch's back to the tinman.

And drawing her hand down it.

And _smiling._

 

There were several ways of moving through a crowd. Cain was fully able to pass unnoticed, however that was not his current style. Nor did he bounce like Glitch, allow people to part like Azkadellia, or politely wend through loose patches like Deegee. He moved in more or less a straight line, only altering his path for tables. People and chairs were not so much pushed out of the way as the space they originally occupied was walked through whether or not they chose to move.

This got even more marked as he made it to the dance floor proper. Couples and groups of friends broke apart, staring at the blood-stained man in their midst. He ignored them.

To him, there was only one other person in the room, and he was going to make it to that man's side if he died in the process. It sounded alot more romantic than it actually was. It wasn't that the woman had smiled at him, though he was vaguely aware much of his anger was being displaced from her to her dance partner. He drew close to the dancing couple.

"Am I interrupting something here?" Wyatt growled darkly.

"Cain, save me." Glitch pleaded immediately, backing away from Azkadellia. He nearly ran into his friend.

"Yeah." said Wyatt, flashing his eyes from each of  the people in the group to the next. "This looks _very dangerous._ "

"It is." Glitch assured him earnestly. "I need an adult."

"Not gonna deny that for a moment, Glitch."

 

Deegee looked at Glitch.

Glitch looked at Cain.

Cain looked at Azkadellia.

Azkadellia looked at Glitch.

Glitch looked at Deegee.

Cain looked at Glitch.

Deegee looked at Azkadellia.

Azkadellia looked away.

The tinman frowned and glared at his friend.

"Forget something, zipperhead?"

"I'm going to need more to go on than that..." he whimpered, trying to remember what he'd forgotten.

"Then don't remember. Deduce. Deduce why I'm so damn angry _right now._ " Cain spread his arms, letting Glitch take in his appearance.

 

Around them, the club kept moving, doing it's best to ignore the unfolding drama. If someone got shot in a club, it was best not to remember their face. And the dirty man stopping the more than slightly unusual group in the middle of a dance floor and talking to them was so conspicuous no one would remember anything about it. All the while, the advisor kept outwardly displaying how hard he was thinking.

 

"You're tried. Sweaty. Angry. Covered in blood." Glitch scratched his ear. "For you, that's not actually alot to go on... Okay. I'm assuming I forgot something because that's true most of the time... okay, so with you being angry, gonna assume you're angry at me, stop me if I'm wrong, because I forgot something, and that got you covered in blood and sweat."

"Keep going, you're almost there." Cain grunted.

Glitch's eyes grew wide.

"The Bio-Etherial-Symbite-Scanner!" Glitch exclaimed. "That's what I was doing in my room! I couldn't remember, so I checked the calender, and saw that it was Monday, so I assumed I was changing my clothes to go dancing!"

"Someone get this man a little gold star."

"Why?" Glitch asked. "Yeah, I figured that out, but still I don't think I'd make a very good detective."

 

Azkadellia started to walk away. Deegee gaped at her sister, looked to Cain, and reached the conclusion that it would be best if Cain walked Glitch through the thought process he was already having and she discovered what her sister's thought process _was._ The younger princess nodded to her friend and took off after her sister in a flutter of blue eyelet and red satin. That left to two men standing awkwardly in the middle of the dance floor.

Cain leveled his gaze on Glitch. He quavered.

"Just making sure I'm pissed at the right person." the tinman said. 

"You're generally pissed at everyone." Ambrose answered.

"Sounds like the right person to me." Cain responded. Glitch looked away and pouted with no little chagrin. 

 

 

Deegee caught up with her sister as she was buying a drink.

"What wine do you have back there?"

"Red or white?"

"Well, what vinyard?"

"No miss, those are your choices. Red or white."

"Oh, white then."

"Az!" said Deegee, sitting down beside her sister. "I need to talk to you."

"Pardon me, miss, but I'll need to see your hand." the bartender interrupted. Deegee looked up automatically. "Everyone gets a free drink with admission, but we need to mark that you've already had one." 

Azkadellia closed her teeth on the tip of her glove and pulled it off, presenting her hand to the bartender. He seemed to take more than usual care in taking her hand and drawing a cross on the back. The man lingered far longer than Deegee would have been comfortable with, and it wasn't until both princesses were looking pointedly at him that he turned back to his bottles.

Deegee also noticed that the bartender hadn't asked for her order. She hadn't intended to order anything, but being denied the opportunity was frustrating. Maybe he could tell she was underage. If twenty was underage in the O.Z.. Deegee hadn't remembered the drinking laws, given that it had never been relevant until now.

 

"Hey." said Azkadellia, smiling weakly. "He called me 'miss'. Guess we've found a place where the princesses of the O.Z. won't be recognized on sight. We should come back here."

Azkadellia was aware that Deegee wasn't really listening. The poor girl was nearly shaking. She placed both hands firmly on the counter. She wasn't looking at Azkadellia directly, but it was clear that she'd sat down to talk to her.

"Az..." she began with a pained voice. "What the heck is going on? This isn't you." Azkadellia frowned, and hunched her shoulders in a way that did not in the least accent her dress. She looped the heels of her silver boots around the rung of her chair and fidgeted with the glove she'd taken off. Deegee attempted to do the same, but it just didn't work with flats. Abandoning that, she tried talking again.

"Azkadellia..."

"I'm sorry I had to do that." she said quietly.

" 'Had to'? " Deegee repeated. "I'm pretty sure you didn't 'have to' seriously invade Glitch's personal space." Azkadellia laughed sadly.

"Seriously," her sister continued. "In order to get any closer to him you'd have to open his zipper and stick your fingers in."

"Yes, technically," Azkadellia admitted, "I was close enough to put my hand in his head."

"That too." 

Azkadellia looked up, as if trying to confirm that her sister had actually said that.

"What is wrong with you tonight?" asked Deegee. "I've never seen you act like that."

"I just wanted to find out..."

"If you could possibly make Glitch more terrified of you than he already is?" Deegee interrupted. "Az, I'm surprised that he remembers you're the not the witch most days. And even if he does, I wouldn't be... pursuing... grinding with him. That dumb little dance I was doing out there?" She made the finger pistol again, only now realizing she probably looked more like Charlie's Angels than someone trying to convey to someone else that a third party wasn't available.  This was followed by the image of her, Azkadellia, and Glitch in jumpsuits with the blazen "Wyatt's Angels", which she attempted to dispel as quickly as possible. "I was trying to tell you-"

"That sweet little Ambrose is a not even remotely closeted homosexual who is currently involved with a certain heavily armed man in our employ?" Azkadellia finished helpfully. She gave a sad little laugh. DG fell silent for a moment. Her sister smiled.

"Then why-" the younger sister started slowly.

"Would I want to mess with someone's head?" Az smiled. "Someone who's head is so easily messable?" Disbelief touched on DG's face.

"That's a really crappy thing to do to someone." she said. It was obvious, but her sister's behavior made her feel like she needed to state the obvious. "And Glitch does _not_ need his head messed with. It's more than messed up enough as it is."

"I didn't mean Ambrose." Azkadellia said. "I had to involve him to test a theory." She glanced over at the two men. Her sister followed her gaze. The disbelif on her face did not increase to much as change.

"You did this to upset Mr. Cain?" asked Deegee. Her older sister nodded with an expression of sheepish satisfaction. Deegee was all but speechless.

"Most people don't try and piss off Cain for kicks." she said slowly. Azkadellia giggled. It was more a nervous giggle than a mischievous one, and not at all what Deegee expected. They sat in silence for a moment.

"You do realize what this means, though."

"No, Deeg. What does this mean?"

"This means if we're going clubbing again we need a new signal for 'gay man with a crazy boyfriend'." Deegee said with a deadpan expression. "How about I grab you by the hair and pull you off of him?"

Azkadellia laughed with some emotion behind it last time.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Glitch."

"You know he'd just run away if I got close." She finally took a sip of her wine, then looked over her shoulder, where the two men where still having a minor scene in the middle of the dance floor. Glitch seemed to be talking at high speed, looking guilty, while Wyatt had the intense expression of someone who just didn't want to hear it anymore.

"I don't know them as well as they do. Or as well as Raw does."

"You've been talking to Raw?"

"He's been really nice about my... well, adjusting. Nicer than most people. No no, I didn't mean you, Deegee." she added, catching her sister's expression. "Anyway, I know that you trust both Cain and Glitch."

"Completely." said Deegee, wondering what her sister was getting at.

"But I don't. I can't. I don't know them well enough to trust them." she looked at her sister. "That's what all of this is about."

"Okay Dr. Maniacal, now that you've got me tied to the laser; explain what all of this is about."

"What?" 

"Nevermind, go on." Deegee put her elbows on the counter. "You'd gotten to the part where you were pawing at Glitch to upset Cain? ...it sounds different when you say it like that."

"No no, that's about it." Azkadellia admitted, shaking her head. "I wanted to know if it was possible for Cain to turn on us."

"No, he'd never do that. Cain's a tinman." Deegee argued. "He's a cop, a good man and our friend. He'd never do anything to put any of the royal family in danger."

"Would he do it for Glitch?" Azkadellia queried. Deegee pondered that a moment, glancing briefly over her shoulder at the two men in question.

"Well, you couldn't exactly ask him that. Even if he didn't avoid the question entirely, he'd lie about it."

"Exactly." said Azkadellia softly. Deegee looked directly at her sister, trying to fathom her thought process.

"I'm not proud of how I found out, but I needed to know." Azkadellia murmured. "And you did too." Deegee frowned at her sister. Largely because Azkadellia was right and she didn't want to acknowledge it. Azkadellia toyed with the end of her hair as she went on-

"I trust you and you trust him, so that should be enough; but I wanted to make sure."

"Why?"

"Because if I was wrong about Cain, I'd like to know. Especially given how he's going to be our bodyguard." she said this slightly louder than the phrase before it, and somehow, over the music and a lull in the awkward "-no really, it was just dancing and it was really all one-sided, her side, actually I was feeling a little molested she's a very scary woman, not that I follow you around because I'm afraid of women, really, it's just Azkadellia and come on she's scary but really I don't see how that's the issue here because I like you because I like you and you're man and your a very nice man, well actually, not not very nice what I mean is I'd like you if you were a woman but I'm glad you're a man is the club usually this quiet usually the music's a bit louder than this-" all concerned parties heard it. And responded in the same fashion.

"Bodyguard?"

 

 

_"I don't want to think anymore_

_I left my head and my heart on the dance floor"_

_-_ "Telephone", Lady Gaga

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see, a fanfic. A songfic. A slashfic. A songfic based off of a song by arguably the most popular contemporary pop artist at the time it was written. Then I waited several years to post it. There's no way I'm getting out of this with my dignity.  
> If you read the story from Azkadellia's point of view, it turns from "Telephone" to "Don't Trust Me". Those songs would be awesome mashed up.
> 
> And the part where the whore made Cain think of DG made me feel dirty to write. D:  
> I know that alot of you are probably thinking "Langwidere" is a stupid name. It is. Some of you are probably thinking "Langwidere? But That character you just described is clearly based on Mombi!" The characters of Princess Langwidere and Mombi were combined in the 1985 movie adaptation of "Return to Oz", and that's why both you and I were confused. I remembered that it wasn't really Mombi who had different heads, having recently reread "The Wonderful Land of Oz" so I was going nuts trying to remember who did.  
> Of course, I couldn't remember Langwidere's name, I went nuts, I asked my mother, she went nuts, we tried to find the book, our library is nuts, and then we gave up and called my godfather, who probably knows more about OZ than Baum, and knew her name in a second. She's a real character. Look it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_characters  
> While we're on the subject of going back to the original books for source material in Tinman fanfics, I'm going to explain why Azkadellia has a penchant for wearing large flowers in her hair during the Reconstruction Era. This is to mimic Ozma and I'll tell you why. I see Akzadellia, once freed from the witch, as being closer to Ozma than any other Oz character. Beyond the fact that she is a beautiful young woman, the rightful ruler of Oz and a close confidant (or sister) of Dorothy (or Deegee), Ozma spent much of her youth hiding with a spell on her to make her appear to be a boy. Tip. When the spell was lifted, there was a noticeable personality change and she became the rightful heir of Oz. Azkadellia was "hidden" with a spell on her while the witch used her body to reign terror on the O.Z. When this spell was lifted and the witch vanquished, Azkadellia, the real Azkadellia, she underwent a noticeable personality change and became heir to the O.Z.  
> While I'm at it, I write Deegee's name Deegee instead of "D.G." for the following reasons. If it was her initials and not her name, why would everyone, including both sets of her parents, call her by it, even when she was a child? I know I've had my nickname pretty much since I was talking and everyone, including my parents, calls me it; but I'm given to understand that's unusual. If her name were *D*orothy *G*ale and not Deegee, why is it when her sister uses a shorter, more personal form of her name, it is not "DG" or "Dora", but "Deeg"? Finally, her sister's name is Azkadellia. Parents capable of naming their first child "Azkadellia" are perfectly twisted enough to name their second "Deegee". It's quite possible. Not to make fun, but look at some of the names kids get today. I'm not just talking about black women, though they do have some pretty silly names sometimes, one of my friends in high-school was a quite caucasian girl named "Tana". Her parents made up the name because they liked the name "Titania" from Midsummer Night's Dream, but thought a child couldn't go through life with that name. So they gave her one that ensured she'd be saying "rhymes with Montana" all her life. Finally, in a society where the names Wyatt, Jeb, Adora, Ambrose, Ahamo, Airofday, and Zero (not to mention Azkadellia) pass without comment, why not Deegee? And I'm beginning to suspect her mother's name really was "Lavendereyes". Or at least Lavender. Lavender is a real name.

**Author's Note:**

> Except the fic was inspired by [this mashup](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLo-u17V-lY) , hence the title.
> 
> So Cain gets his film noir on. The part where the whore made Cain think of DG made me feel dirty to write. D:  
> I know that alot of you are probably thinking "Langwidere" is a stupid name. It is. Some of you are probably thinking "Langwidere? But That character you just described is clearly based on Mombi!" The characters of Princess Langwidere and Mombi were combined in the 1985 movie adaptation of "Return to Oz", and that's why both you and I were confused. I remembered that it wasn't really Mombi who had different heads, having recently reread "The Wonderful Land of Oz" so I was going nuts trying to remember who did.  
> Of course, I couldn't remember Langwidere's name, I went nuts, I asked my mother, she went nuts, we tried to find the book, our library is nuts, and then we gave up and called my godfather, who probably knows more about OZ than Baum, and knew her name in a second. She's a real character. Look it up.


End file.
